"Who Said It Was Simple" by Audre Lorde

this isn't a shitpost, i just think about this poem often

There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free. An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed see causes in colour as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.

i love this poem because it's simple and nothing is hidden behind obtuse poetic prose. audre lorde is basically expressing frustration with complacently-racist wealthy white feminists spaces in a world before "intersectionality" was even a word

part of why i appreciate this is because it captures some of lorde's perspective. i wasn't an activist in the 1970s and i'm barely one today. but i feel like i'm there sitting in Nedicks too

but i also appreciate how she was able to succinctly identify and express a Problem without having the word for it, and that she was undeterred in her activism despite, by all accounts, things Kind Of Sucking. that's something i struggle with nowadays!

anyways i think we should all read and share poetry more often. just_poets perhaps